105 INDIANAPOLIS REGIONAL CENTER PLAN 2020 PLANNING DOWNTOWN�fS FUTURE TODAY APPENDIX A: HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT Square accommodating the new auto age and a building boom saw the Downtown construction of low-cost cottages as well as the new club- office-hotel developments such as the Columbia Club that rebuilt at its current Monument Circle site in 1925. The party ended on October 29, 1929 as the New York Stock Exchange's Black Tuesday ushered in the Great Depression.  As money sources dried up and the value of the currency plummeted, development was frozen.  Banks failed; factories closed or went on a part-time basis; wages fell dramatically as unemployment soared.  Bankruptcies were commonplace; Regional Center stores were boarded; foreclosures increased drastically; and tax delinquencies doubled. Hard times brought political change.  Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept into power in a landslide in 1932.  He was outpolled locally by Indiana's new governor, Paul Vories McNutt.  Supported by a Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature and ably assisted by Frank McHale and Pleas E. Greenlee, McNutt's administration was able to pass legislation that would have been unthinkable even a few years previously.   Although very little development went on in the 1930s, his economic legislation set a new basis for government financing and revenue generation. Representative buildings of the era are Circle Theater (1916), Chamber of Commerce (1926), Walker Building (1927) and Lockefield Gardens Apartments (1937). 1941-1969: EXPANSION AND URBANIZATION While the population as a whole was drawn up in the ideological and political issues of the war that was raging in Europe, many also had come to view it as a business opportunity.  When the country formally entered the Second World War in 1941, the Chamber of Commerce had already moved to convert Indianapolis' metalworking industry to defense production.  The city quickly became Toolmaker to the Nation as hundreds of plants turned out products of war.  Once again, war proved to be the remedy that shook the city out of its pre-war economic lethargy. Industrial production grew from $140,000,000 in 1939 to $940,000,000 in under a decade.   Factory employment more than doubled (30,000 in the production of transportation equipment alone).  National business firms such Bridgeport Brass, Ford, Chrysler, RCA and Western Electric located or expanded locally.  A new trend of mergers with large, out-of-state companies accelerated.  By 1950 the population increased to 427,173 and one of every four Hoosiers resided in Indianapolis. Conservatism once again ruled the day in the capital.  A conservative publisher and radio station owner, Eugene Collins Pulliam, acquired the Indianapolis Star expanding its publishing facilities on North Pennsylvania Street.  Four years later, the Indianapolis News was acquired and the publication of both dailies consolidated at the same facility. Local business and politics alike vehemently opposed many of the New Deal policies and programs of the Roosevelt administration and increasingly fought what they saw as the intrusion of the federal government in local affairs under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.  The issue became one of States' rights versus federal financial aid.   state went so far as to go on record in 1953 as opposing federal aid (seen as intervention) to the states when it passed legislation opening welfare rolls to the public, thus intentionally jeopardizing $36,000,000 in federal welfare assistance. Ultra-conservatism became embodied in the principles of the Indianapolis-based John Birch Society.  Less extreme conservative groups such as the Americans for Conservative Action, the For America Committee and the Citizens' Committee for Research united behind the anti- Communist movement and other conservative causes. The most effective conservative influence of city was William Henry Book.  Executive Vice- View of Mile Square in 1929 Indiana Historical Society, Bass Photo Collection, 214810F